As we celebrate Book Week this week in New South Wales, it reminded me that one of the very few simple pleasures in life comes from reading a book. I love nothing more than to spend a protracted length of time reading for pleasure. Each school holiday, after a busy term, I reward myself with a new book to read. I start by browsing in either a book shop, my local book library stall or online for the perfect book and I select very carefully because if I am going to devote hours of my precious free time to a book, I want it to be a good one. Selecting my books to read is the first joy associated with reading. In the holidays, I can spend absolutely hours reading and with the right book it can be all-consuming as I can’t put my book down. I always feel so much better from the experience of having read a good book.

Research is now proving something that I have innately known for a long time – that reading a book can improve mental health, increase capacity for empathy, and reduce stress. I found this great article in the Sydney Morning Herald “For Better Mental Health Get Your Nose Into A Book” which is an excellent read.

Yet despite this research, and what some of us know about the benefits of reading for a long time, I fear that fewer of us are reading books than ever before. There is no doubt with the dominance of technology in our lives we are probably reading more but with less depth and enjoyment, as now we spend our time scrolling through social media and reading online. Our skill is now speed and skim reading rather than reading for depth, detail and understanding.

Studies from the University of California have found that we are eroding our ability to concentrate for periods of time and that students are finding that they are experiencing deficits and a lack of skill in reading for depth and for sustained periods of time. You ask students to read a novel now and they groan or ask for the summary of the novel! These studies have also identified there is a definite cost to multi-tasking. How often have you seen your teen managing multiple devices or splitting their screens and viewing a variety of different things at one time?

Parents often ask me what academic advantage they can give their children in High School. For me, there is a very simple answer and that is to encourage them from a very young age to read books for pleasure. If reading is viewed as a pleasure and a joy rather than an onerous task which needs to be endured and survived, then your child will have a much better High School experience. There is a great deal of reading required in the senior years of High School and, to achieve great academic success, reading for depth and understanding is crucial.

As parents, we need to role model what we value for our children. If we want our children to be able to concentrate for sustained periods of time, to reduce their stress and to increase their knowledge and understanding of people, cultures and the world, then we need to resist the temptation to pick up our phones each evening for entertainment and instead pick up a book.

As a family this week, to celebrate Book Week, let’s plan to get everyone a new book, to agree to put down our phones and instead pick up our books and read for thirty minutes each night.

The benefits will be immeasurable!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Hemphill is the Head of High School at Moriah College in Queens Park, NSW.